


The past never leaves you

by queen_ypolita



Category: The Charioteer - Renault
Genre: 100-1000 Words, Challenge Response, Gen, emotional blackmail, relationships, spooky Halloween stories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-28
Updated: 2009-10-28
Packaged: 2017-10-05 23:57:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/47422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queen_ypolita/pseuds/queen_ypolita
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucy is spooked by the appearance of upsetting notes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The past never leaves you

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/maryrenaultfics/profile)[**maryrenaultfics**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/maryrenaultfics/) 2009 Spooky Story Event. Betaed by [](http://trueriver.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**trueriver**](http://trueriver.dreamwidth.org/). Originally posted on [maryrenaultfics](http://community.livejournal.com/maryrenaultfics/314099.html).

Lucy set the vase on the dining table and took a step back to see the overall impression. Something didn't look quite right and she adjusted the position of the vase. That was better. When she looked up, something dangling from the ceiling near the corner of the room caught her eye. Not another cobweb, she thought. She must have a word with Mrs Parsons. If only Mrs Parsons didn't take it so hard to accept she was no longer as sharp-eyed as she had once been. She had been dusting and polishing the vicarage as long as Lucy could remember, probably forty years if not more. She had tried to persuade dear Gareth to let her bring Mrs Timmings in, to replace Mrs Parsons, but he wouldn't even consider it as long as Mrs Parsons felt herself capable of carrying out her tasks.

Sighing, she thought she had better have it out with Mrs Parsons at once, although she didn't relish the prospect of facing the hostility such conversations inevitably aroused in the older woman, who took even the most kindly intended suggestions as a personal attack, and wasn't afraid to give a tongue-lashing to the vicar's wife if necessary, although she seemed to draw the line at the vicar himself.

She was just about the leave the dining room when she noticed a slip of paper on the floor. Puzzled, she picked it up. It looked old and as if it had been torn off from a larger sheet of lined paper. The handwriting didn't look familiar. The ink had faded but was still visibly green. The slip contained one sentence that immediately sent chills down her spine: _Once upon a time, Lucy L didn't think twice about walking out of her marriage._

Her divorce wasn't a secret, of course, but as Michael had passed away so shortly afterwards, it didn't seem that important, and half the time she forgot she had ever gone through the process. And Gareth knew, of course, and had been ever so tactful about it. She couldn't understand what this note was doing here now. Was someone trying to intimidate her? Surely she didn't have any enemies. Although you never knew what some of these village women felt about the vicar's wife.

She put the note in her pocket and resolved not to think any more about it.

Going to her bedroom to change for dinner some hours later, her eyes were immediately fixed on a white corner peeping out from under the shawl she had left folded at the end of her bed. She couldn't help but to snatch at it and devour its contents. Again, just one sentence, in faded green ink on lined paper: _Lucy L raised a mummy's boy who loves to dance down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily._

She stared at the words for several minutes, until she heard Gareth calling her name, and remembered she had come upstairs to change. When she unbuttoned her blouse and stepped out of her skirt, the words were still ringing in her ears. When she took her blue dress off its hanger and pulled it over her head, the green words were dancing in her field of vision. The note in the dining room downstairs could have come into the house with any number of people, and might not even be about her. This slip here suggested active malicious intent. Seeing the time, she realised she must put it out of her mind and pushed both notes into the book on her bedside table.

Later that night she lay in bed wide awake, listening to Gareth's regular breathing. She didn't know what she should do. If someone was spreading malicious gossip about her, he should hear it from her before someone else made it his business to tell him. But if she was wrong? What if she was imagining the whole thing? She felt for the notes in her book; they were still there. In the darkness of the bedroom, she couldn't read them but she didn't need to. She could still see the green ink in her mind's eye. Who had written the notes? And how had she (or he) brought them into the house, without anyone noticing? Who had a reason for spreading such malicious lies about Laurie?

She was worried that her fretting would wake Gareth, and as she couldn't think of words to explain to him what was wrong, she got up, put on her dressing gown and made her way downstairs to the kitchen to have a cup of hot cocoa to calm her nerves.

She sat down at the table with steam rising from her cup, and brought the slips on to the table from her pocket. From a distance, the church bells were striking midnight. As she smoothed the slips of paper on the tablecloth, the green ink began to fade and eventually disappeared completely. Once the slips of paper were clean of any writing, they too seemed to fade and disappear until there was nothing but her cup of cocoa on the table.

But that was impossible. Slips of paper didn't just fade away and disappear. Then she remembered. Yesterday had been the day she had received her decree absolute all those years ago. She didn't believe in ghosts but there wasn't any other explanation for this. Why couldn't Michael rest in peace, why did he have to intrude into her life with such hurtful things after so many long years? She hadn't thought about him for a long time but she knew now the words in green ink would linger in her memory.


End file.
